Brooklyn Hype at Its Best

By

Frederick Dreier

Jan. 17, 2013 8:57 p.m. ET

The chorus of Alicia Keys's "This Girl is on Fire" echoed through the Barclays Center on Tuesday night as the Nets starters strolled to the bench during a first quarter timeout. On cue, the Nets' army of dancers, tumblers and stilt walkers swarmed the court, gyrating to hip-hop beats while tossing rolled up T-shirts into crowd.

ENLARGE

The Brooklyn Nets dancers perform.
Getty Images

From her seat in the mezzanine, Petra Pope, who oversees the Nets' entertainment, critiqued the show. Pope said the thumping soundtrack, created by the team's DJ "J Period," was sufficiently Brooklyn-centric. The T-shirt gun had a new CO2 canister that blasted away with a healthy thump. But one of the female stilt walkers teetered nervously, which was a no-no in Pope's book.

"I'd like to see her dancing on the stilts, she knows the choreography," said Pope, whose official title is senior vice president of event marketing. "I push my staff very hard. I don't spare feelings because this is a business."

It may come as a shock to first-time Barclays Center visitors, but a Brooklyn Nets game these days resembles a hip-hop dance concert that occasionally features basketball. Entertainers cram the court 13 times during each game to perform various routines, such as springboard dunk challenges and urban freestyle dance-offs. A soundtrack of Jay-Z, Notorious B.I.G. and other Brooklyn hip-hop artists fuels the show.

Pop tunes even play during the game action, but only when the Nets are on offense. Guard MarShon Brooks said he hears the music, but it's rarely distracting.

"You hear it for a split second, and tune it out, unless it's one of those songs you really like," said Brooks, 23. "If I'm at the free throw line, I might nod my head once or twice."

According to Pope, the team's entertainment wing has 91 full- and part-time employees, including the 12 members of the Brooklynettes dance team, two DJs and 46 "team hype" members. Pope declined to discuss her budget. But Tom O'Grady, whose Gameplan Creative firm does entertainment consulting for various pro sports teams, said it likely easily surpasses the $500,000 a year mark.

"In the NBA, the budget is higher. They are always pushing the entertainment component over the top," O'Grady said. "The goal is to have no dead spots during a game."

While David Stern doesn't exactly handpick the Brooklynettes' sequined jumpsuits, league officials do monitor how each team runs its entertainment. O'Grady said the league collects and then disseminates trade information, such as which traveling contortionist scores the best with fans, or whether mascot slam dunks are taking attention away from the players.

"Teams are trying to outdo each other," O'Grady said. "It's a friendly competition, but everybody is looking at what the other guys are doing."

Pope, who founded the Lakers cheerleaders in 1983 and also launched the Knicks City Dancers in 1991, said major-market teams are willing to pay for the luxury items, such as elaborate costumes for dancers and expensive giveaways for fan contests.

She said she envied the Miami Heat's setup. The enormous video boards at Miami's American Airlines Center require 10 technicians, while Brooklyn only needs two. The Heat's 23-woman dance squad enjoys a multitude of costumes as well, she said.

"It's hot, it's sexy, it's Salsa," Pope said. "Their vibe is so Latin, so when you go there, you know you're in Miami."

Pope said her goal is similar. She hopes the hip-hop tunes and urban dance moves create a distinctly Brooklyn atmosphere, to differentiate the team from its New Jersey past. She said the Nets even abandoned their former hard rock-filled playlist for more rap mashups when the team moved before this season.

"I told my DJ to blow up the playlist, we were starting fresh," she said.

While it may be impossible to quantify just how many Brooklynites Pope's entertainment regime brings the Barclay's Center each night, an informal poll of fans turned up more positive feedback than negative. Chris Mannan, 41, a member of NYU's executive M.B.A. program, said the game sometimes felt like a sideshow.

"A hard-core fan might be happier watching on TV," he said. "But then you wouldn't get the music."

Season ticket owners Adrian and Maggie Cockerill, both attorneys, said the booming music helped keep them engaged during blowouts. They said the highlight of the season had been Sunday night's "Russian Culture Night," when famed violinist Alexander Markov played the national anthem on a glowing violin.

"It was awesome, the bow lit up like a light saber," said Adrian Cockerill. "I was like, that's what we came here for."

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